California employment case index

A PAGA plaintiff proved Labor Code violations but recovered about one percent of the $56 million maximum he calculated, and his attorney fees were cut by a 0.70 negative multiplier. The Fourth District affirms: section 2699(e)(2) mandates no method for reducing penalties — per-employee is fine — and the trial court adequately justified the fee multiplier, leaving the “heightened scrutiny” question for the Supreme Court.

An employee with an undisclosed bipolar diagnosis was fired after two episodes of erratic, irrational behavior at work, then sued Target under FEHA. The Second District affirms summary judgment: employer knowledge is a prerequisite to FEHA disability liability, and it is imputed only when disability is the “only reasonable interpretation” of the conduct — not where intoxication, medication, or sleep deprivation could equally explain it.

Studebaker made a new employee sign three onboarding arbitration documents; the trial court found their “conflicts” showed no valid agreement and denied arbitration. The Second District reverses and compels arbitration — ambiguities must be reconciled to give effect to the intent to arbitrate, the agreement was not unconscionable, and an inconsistent wholesale PAGA waiver should have been severed.

Must a California employer accommodate an employee who is not disabled but who cares for someone who is? Castro-Ramirez said in 2016 that FEHA “may reasonably be interpreted” to require it — and expressly declined to decide. Nine years on, no published California decision has answered, the Civil Rights Council’s 2020 request for public input produced no regulation, and CACI 2547 still calls the element optional. Meanwhile five federal district courts — Castro v. Classy, McVay, and 2025’s Acosta, Head, and De Wit — have all held that failure-to-accommodate and interactive-process claims may rest on associational disability. This analysis maps the statutory argument, the unpublished contrary authority, and how to plead the caregiver’s claim while the question stays open.

After Turrieta v. Lyft disapproved Moniz II by name, the objector in the long-running Adecco PAGA settlement tried a new key for the same lock: she was asserting her own personal interests — a penalty share, fees, a service award — not the state’s. Division Four dismissed her appeals. Every interest she claimed arises from PAGA itself and is derivative of the state’s; relabeling it personal is a semantic exercise that would leave Turrieta’s holding with no effect. The first published application of Turrieta makes overlapping-settlement fights a before-judgment affair: object in the approving court, police preclusion scope under LaCour — but intervention, vacatur, and appeal are closed.

After a harbor patrol officer’s on-duty accident left him unable to work, the Port San Luis Harbor District told him retirement was his “single option” — then denied his CalPERS disability-retirement application and terminated him on a resignation theory it later admitted was false. Division Six affirmed summary judgment on his FEHA claim anyway: denial of disability-retirement payments is not an adverse employment action, because retirement benefits begin when employment ends, and a claimant who cannot perform his essential duties is not a “qualified individual” under Green. The remedy for a wrongful denial is an appeal to the Office of Administrative Hearings and administrative mandamus — a route Lowry lost by following a repealed procedure.

Does every PAGA action contain an individual claim an employer can compel to arbitration? The split the California Supreme Court will resolve.

Two Highland Hospital workers sued the public hospital authority running Alameda County’s medical facilities for meal-and-rest violations, unpaid wages, and PAGA penalties. A unanimous Supreme Court ended the case at the definitions: Labor Code section 18’s “person” — the term that controls who is an “employer” under the wage order and who can be penalized under PAGA — affirmatively excludes public entities. Absent express words bringing the government in, break rules and PAGA penalties stop at the public-sector line. The court disapproved Sargent’s contrary rule for statutes carrying their own penalties, declined to decide whether Government Code section 818 independently bars such penalties, and reserved the effect of the 2024 PAGA reform.

Three Lyft drivers filed overlapping PAGA actions; when one settled, the other two moved to intervene, objected, and moved to vacate the judgment — invoking their status as deputized proxies of the state. A divided Supreme Court held a PAGA plaintiff’s deputization confers no such rights: the statute delegates the power to commence and prosecute one’s own action, and it entrusts settlement oversight to the LWDA and the approving court. Moniz v. Adecco is disapproved. What remains for rival plaintiffs is coordination, informal input to the approving court, and advocacy to the LWDA — plus the open questions the court expressly reserved, including the state’s own rights and personal-interest intervention.

Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc. (2024) 15 Cal.5th 582 holds that trial courts lack inherent authority to strike a PAGA claim as unmanageable, even if it is complex or time-intensive. Manageability is a class-action requirement that does not apply to PAGA; complexity must be handled through ordinary case-management tools, not dismissal.

Marshalls bought a sweeping PAGA release in a federal settlement whose plaintiff had noticed only one theory to the LWDA — off-the-clock time in end-of-shift bag checks. When Robert LaCour later sued over expense reimbursement and other never-noticed violations, the trial court struck his claims as precluded. Division Four reversed: a PAGA judgment’s preclusive reach is measured by the claims the settling plaintiff pleaded or was authorized by her LWDA notice to plead, not by the words of her release, and an unauthorized proxy is in privity with no one. The court also upheld pandemic Emergency Rule 9, and it reserved issue preclusion while barring any double recovery.

Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 1104 holds that a PAGA plaintiff whose individual claims are compelled to arbitration retains standing as an “aggrieved employee” to litigate the non-individual representative claims in court — California’s answer to the standing question left open by Viking River.

In the first California decision to articulate the elements of a reasonable-accommodation claim under the Pregnancy Disability Leave Law (Gov. Code, § 12945, subd. (a)(3)(A)), the Court of Appeal held that a plaintiff must prove a pregnancy-related condition, a request made on her health care provider's advice, the employer's refusal of a reasonable accommodation, and that she could perform the essential functions of the job with that accommodation. Although section 12945 affords protections over and above section 12940, none entitles an employee to a job she cannot perform. Judgment for the employer affirmed.

A unanimous Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment for Kaiser, holding that even though the employer granted every accommodation the employee requested, it could still be liable for failing to accommodate and failing to engage in the interactive process because, through her supervisor, it knew of but never provided a needed lighter-tasks accommodation. The court also reinstated the disability-discrimination and retaliation claims on a cat’s-paw theory.

The FAA preempts Iskanian to the extent it bars division of a PAGA action and prevents arbitration of an employee’s individual PAGA claim; an employer may compel the individual PAGA claim to arbitration. (The Supreme Court further opined that, under its reading of California law, the plaintiff would then lack standing…

In the Sixth District's treatise-level employment-MSJ opinion, a security supervisor laid off days before his expected return from knee surgery revives his disability discrimination and wrongful termination claims — the employer's RIF showing was inadequate under Guz's "roadmap" because it never explained retaining two lower-ranked supervisors, and its failure to accommodate, the timing, and an overpayment vendetta were substantial evidence of animus — while the retaliation claim fails because pre-2016 accommodation requests were not protected activity.

The Court of Appeal held that a plaintiff suing for failure to engage in the interactive process under Government Code section 12940, subdivision (n) must prove a reasonable accommodation was actually available. Substantial evidence supported finite leave as an available accommodation for the plaintiff’s carpal-tunnel (wrist) injury, but none supported any accommodation for her later shoulder injury. Because the general verdict did not reveal which disability the jury relied on, the judgment was reversed for a limited retrial.

Settling and dismissing individual Labor Code claims does not strip an employee of standing to pursue a PAGA claim. PAGA standing depends on being an “aggrieved employee” — someone employed by the alleged violator against whom one or more Labor Code violations were committed — not on maintaining an unredressed…

The unpaid-wages component of section 558 is not a civil penalty recoverable through PAGA; only the fixed civil penalties ($50/$100 per employee per pay period) are PAGA penalties. Because the unpaid wages are not part of the PAGA claim, the trial court could not compel that portion to arbitration as if it were.

The Fourth District reversed summary judgment for the County, holding that a deputy district attorney's internal warnings that a murder prosecution lacked probable cause were protected disclosures under Labor Code section 1102.5 — no express citation of law required, job duties notwithstanding — and that months of testing for a suspected neurological disease raised a triable issue of FEHA disability.

A unanimous Court of Appeal affirmed a $723,746 judgment for a probationary community-college employee terminated while on approved industrial-injury leave. Granting the leave was not a reasonable accommodation because it led directly to her termination; FEHA and Education Code section 88013 let the district toll, not forfeit, her probation, and its conduct showed no good-faith interactive process.

A 15-year Berkeley Tennis Club employee fired after a recorder was found at a board meeting sued for FEHA disability discrimination, harassment, and more, alleging her severe obesity is a protected physical disability. The Court of Appeal held the Club, as summary-adjudication movant, never carried its initial burden of showing Cornell could not prove a physiological cause for her obesity, reinstating her discrimination, harassment, and defamation claims while affirming dismissal of accommodation and retaliation.

A PAGA plaintiff is presumptively entitled to discover the identities and contact information of other aggrieved employees statewide, subject to the employees’ privacy interests (which may be protected through a Belaire-West opt-out notice) rather than to a heightened threshold showing of merit before discovery.

When an employee resigns and the employer promptly accepts, can she undo it by later revealing she was disabled at the time? In Featherstone, the Court of Appeal said no — refusing to let a former employee rescind a voluntary, accepted resignation is not an adverse employment action under FEHA, and an accommodation duty never arises for a disability the employer did not know about when the resignation was accepted.

Five LAPD recruits were injured during Academy training and parked in the Department’s light-duty “Recycle” program until, mid-recovery, the City imposed a new six-month cutoff and forced them out. Atkins holds that the recruits could not win a FEHA disability-discrimination claim — they could not perform a recruit’s physically demanding essential functions, and FEHA never requires eliminating an essential function — yet could win a failure-to-accommodate claim, because they had actually performed the Recycle duties and the City’s own longstanding practice made continued reassignment reasonable. The court also vacated lifetime-career front-pay damages as speculative.

In Bareno v. San Diego Community College District (2017) 7 Cal.App.5th 546, the Fourth District reversed summary judgment for the employer on a CFRA retaliation claim, holding that the 30-day advance-notice rule does not apply when the need for medical leave is unforeseeable — notice need only be given “as soon as practicable” — and that whether an employee sufficiently requested leave and supplied adequate certification is a question of fact. The employer’s decision to treat the employee’s medical absences as a “voluntary resignation,” coming virtually immediately after she sought leave, raised triable issues of retaliatory causation.

Soria v. Univision Radio Los Angeles, Inc.A detailed application of the summary-judgment framework to FEHA disability claims: triable issues on the employer’s knowledge of the disability, pretext, and the interactive process defeated summary judgment.Soria v. Univision Radio Los Angeles, Inc. (2016) 5 Cal.App.5th 570Parallel citation: 210 Cal.Rptr.3d 59. Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate […]

Wallace v. County of Stanislaus A FEHA disability-discrimination plaintiff need not prove the employer acted out of animosity or ill will; it is enough that the disability was a “substantial motivating reason” for the adverse action — even a well-intentioned but mistaken one. Wallace v. County of Stanislaus (2016) 245 Cal.App.4th 109 Parallel citation: 199 […]

An employee who cannot work under a particular supervisor because of anxiety and stress tied to that supervisor’s ordinary oversight has no disability under FEHA. In Higgins-Williams, the Third District affirmed summary judgment for Sutter on that single ground, which dissolved the plaintiff’s discrimination, accommodation, retaliation, and wrongful-termination claims, while remanding only the cost award under Williams v. Chino Valley.

The arbitrator’s award was upheld. Under the narrow standard of review governing arbitration awards, the court declined to decide whether the “honest belief” defense applies to CFRA claims; even assuming the arbitrator erred in invoking it, the error did not deprive the employee of an unwaivable statutory right, so…

A disabled Santa Monica refuse worker argued his employer could have kept him on by stripping heavy lifting from the job or holding a position open. The Court of Appeal disagreed, holding that eliminating a true essential function is not a reasonable accommodation, that reassignment is required only where an actual qualifying vacancy exists, and that a bare request for accommodation is not protected activity for a retaliation claim.

In Swanson v. Morongo Unified School Dist. (2014) 232 Cal.App.4th 954, the Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment for a school district sued by a breast-cancer-survivor teacher whose contract was not renewed. The court held that FEHA imposes a continuous, good-faith duty to engage in the interactive process under Government Code section 12940, subdivision (n) — not satisfied by a single gesture — and that reasonable accommodation can require reassignment to a vacant position under subdivision (m), implicating CACI Nos. 2541 and 2546.

Iskanian v. CLS Transportation (2014) 59 Cal.4th 348 holds that class-action waivers in employment arbitration agreements are enforceable after Concepcion (abrogating Gentry), but a predispute waiver of a representative PAGA action is contrary to public policy and not preempted by the FAA, because a PAGA claim belongs to the state.

In a case of first impression, the Court of Appeal held that an employee disabled by a high-risk pregnancy who was terminated after exhausting the four months of leave guaranteed by the Pregnancy Disability Leave Law may still state a FEHA claim, because the PDLL augments rather than supplants the independent reasonable-accommodation duty of Government Code section 12940, subdivision (m). A finite leave exceeding four months can be a reasonable accommodation, and the plaintiff's allegations cleared demurrer.

A correctional lieutenant who lost the use of his left arm could no longer use a baton or subdue inmates. In Furtado v. State Personnel Bd. (2013) 212 Cal.App.4th 729, the Court of Appeal held that FEHA's reassignment duty, though affirmative, does not require an employer to waive an essential function or create an administrative position that does not exist; medical demotion to a position the employee could perform was proper.

In Olofsson v. Mission Linen Supply (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 1236, the First District held that an employer’s regulatory duty to respond to a CFRA leave request within ten calendar days is not a duty to grant or deny it within that window. Affirming a defense judgment, the court ruled substantial evidence supported findings that the employer neither misrepresented that a route driver’s family leave was approved nor stayed silent when it had a duty to speak, even though it disclosed his ineligibility — 175 to 176 hours short of the 1,250-hour threshold — only the day before he left to care for his mother.

In Lui v. City and County of San Francisco (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 962, the First District affirmed a defense judgment, holding that strenuous patrol duties — forcible arrests, pursuing suspects, emergency response — are essential functions of administrative police positions because the Department must be able to deploy every full-duty officer during mass mobilizations, even if those situations are infrequent. A disabled officer who cannot perform those duties is not a qualified individual under FEHA, and the employer need not create a permanent light-duty post.

The Court of Appeal reversed a $356,000 CFRA judgment, holding that the right to reinstatement to the same or a comparable position expires at the end of the 12-week protected leave — so an employee who returned after 19 weeks had no interference claim — and that her retaliation claim failed for lack of evidence rebutting the County’s reorganization rationale.

A disabled LAPD officer placed in a permanent administrative light-duty post under the department's longstanding accommodation policy is a qualified individual under FEHA if he can perform that post's essential functions — not the field duties of a sworn officer generally. Removing him because a workers' compensation administrator rated him 100% disabled violated Government Code section 12940, subdivision (m). The Court of Appeal affirmed a $1,571,500 judgment.

The FEHA protects an employee’s disability status, not threatening or violent conduct; an employer may discipline or terminate an employee for making workplace threats even if the threats are caused by a disability, and doing so is not unlawful disability discrimination (195 Cal.App.4th at p. 147).

Harassment and discrimination are distinct wrongs, but official personnel actions can themselves supply evidence of a hostile message and thus support a harassment claim; the two theories are not hermetically sealed. On punitive damages, the court held that in the circumstances of this case the amount of compensatory…

Affirming a judgment for a disabled grocery checker on her FEHA failure-to-accommodate claim, the Court of Appeal held that the duty to engage in the interactive process (Gov. Code, § 12940, subd. (n)) and the duty to provide a reasonable accommodation (id., subd. (m)) are separate, independent claims; an employer cannot graft the interactive process onto, and thereby excuse, a later failure to deliver an accommodation it had already granted. The court also held the failure-to-accommodate statute contains no “pattern of failure” requirement, so a single lapse is actionable, with triviality a jury question.

Arias v. Superior Court (2009) 46 Cal.4th 969 holds that a representative PAGA action for civil penalties need not satisfy class-action requirements, while a representative UCL claim for the same Labor Code violations must — and that a non-class PAGA action does not violate the employer’s due-process rights.

Two unions took assignments from more than 150 transportation workers and sued their employers under the UCL and PAGA for meal- and rest-break violations. The Supreme Court unanimously shut the door: after Proposition 64, an assignment cannot confer UCL standing on an uninjured assignee, and a PAGA claim cannot be assigned at all — the act creates no property right, so the aggrieved employee, suing as the state’s proxy, ‘does not own an assignable interest.’ Associational standing does not fill the gap, and representative UCL claims must proceed as class actions per the same-day companion, Arias. The state-proxy architecture announced here is the foundation Iskanian, Kim v. Reins, Adolph, and Turrieta all build on — and the 2024 reform kept its line intact.

To recover for failure to engage in the interactive process, an employee must identify a reasonable accommodation that was available at the time the interactive process should have occurred; because Scotch did not identify such an available accommodation, he could not recover on that claim.

The decision clarified the reasonable-accommodation burdens: an employee claiming failure to accommodate by reassignment must show a vacant position existed for which she was qualified, while the allocation of proof tracks who has access to the relevant information; on this record, triable issues precluded summary…

An employee fired under a no-fault attendance policy after a pancreatitis hospitalization sued under FEHA, CFRA, and Tameny. The Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment on the FEHA disability claims — telling the employer he was “sick” or hospitalized did not give notice of a disability — but reversed on CFRA and the related Tameny claim, holding that while “calling in sick” alone is insufficient CFRA notice, hospital records showing inpatient care can constitute a request for CFRA-qualifying leave, shifting to the employer the burden to inquire and designate, and that causation does not require the decision-maker to know the absences were protected.

Carlos Arteaga, a messenger on Brink’s armored trucks, first told the company about pain and numbness in his arms and fingers — and filed workers’ compensation claims — while Brink’s was investigating a string of cash shortages on his ATM runs; he was terminat

The California Supreme Court held that a CFRA employee’s simultaneous performance of a similar part-time job for another employer is strong but not conclusive evidence that she could perform the functions of her own full-time position. Because the phrase “functions of the position of that employee” means the job this employer assigned — not job functions “generally” — whether Lonicki had a serious health condition disabling her from her Sutter job remained a triable issue, and summary judgment was reversed. The Court separately held that an employer’s failure to invoke the second- and third-opinion dispute-resolution procedure does not estop it from litigating the medical merits.

The FEHA does not require an employer to accommodate an employee’s use of medical marijuana. The Compassionate Use Act did not address the rights and duties of employers and employees, and under California law an employer may require pre-employment drug testing and may take illegal drug use into account in employment…

Failure to engage in the interactive process is a separate FEHA violation requiring different proof from failure to provide a reasonable accommodation; the two findings are not inconsistent, so a jury may hold an employer liable for failing to engage in the interactive process even while finding no failure to…

The employee bears the burden of proving he or she is a qualified individual under the FEHA — that is, able to perform the essential duties of the position with or without reasonable accommodation — just as the federal ADA requires; it is not the employer’s burden to disprove qualification.

The Third District affirmed summary judgment for UPS on a 30-year supervisor's disability claims, holding that the employer's honest belief in its integrity-violation charge — not the truth of the accusation — controls, and that accommodation claims require a specific request and concrete medical restrictions.

Reversing summary judgment, the Court of Appeal held that an employee need not mention the CFRA to request protected medical leave — and that an employer that never gave notice of CFRA rights, rejected a chiropractor's certification out of hand, and refused to communicate with the employee's designated representatives could not defeat his interference, retaliation, disability discrimination, and wrongful termination claims as a matter of law.

Yes. An employer that regards a person as physically disabled must engage in the interactive process and provide reasonable accommodation to that person, even if he or she is not actually disabled; the duty runs to those “regarded as” disabled, not only to the actually disabled (id. at p. 40).

In Claudio v. Regents of University of California (2005) 134 Cal.App.4th 224, the Third District reversed summary judgment, holding that an employee may bring a stand-alone FEHA claim for the employer's failure to engage in the timely, good-faith interactive process required by Government Code section 12940, subdivision (n)—while emphasizing that the process demands good-faith participation by both employer and employee.

The FEHA requires only that a physiological disease or condition affecting a body system “limit” — not “substantially limit” — the plaintiff’s ability to participate in a major life activity, a standard broader than the federal ADA; the later Poppink Act merely clarified, and did not change, that existing “limits”…

Reviewing a demurrer sustained without leave to amend, the Court of Appeal held that an employee stated a cause of action for damages caused by her employer's failure to make reasonable accommodation for her known disability under FEHA. Treating Government Code section 12940, subdivision (m) as a “separate and distinct” unlawful employment practice independent of the disability-discrimination prohibition in subdivision (a), the court rejected the importation of federal ADA limits (the “qualified individual” and adverse-action requirements) and held the FEHA accommodation duty broader than the ADA's, and not barred by workers' compensation exclusivity.

The continuing-violation doctrine applies to FEHA claims: an employer’s related unlawful acts are treated as a single continuing violation — and the limitations period does not begin to run — so long as the conduct is sufficiently similar and frequent and has not yet acquired a degree of permanence that should put the…

In Diffey v. Riverside County Sheriff's Dept. (2000) 84 Cal.App.4th 1031, the Fourth District reversed a verdict for a color-blind deputy applicant and directed judgment for the County, holding that a 'regarded-as' disability claim requires proof that the employer's perception stemmed from a false idea—'myths, fears and stereotypes'—about disability; an employer's accurate assessment of a genuine limitation does not satisfy the perceived-disability prong.

In Spitzer v. Good Guys, Inc. (2000) 80 Cal.App.4th 1376, the First District reversed summary judgment on a failure-to-accommodate claim, holding in the published portion that FEHA's reasonable-accommodation duty can require reassigning a disabled employee to a vacant position—an obligation the employer escapes only by showing undue hardship or that no suitable vacancy exists.

In Pang v. Beverly Hospital, Inc. (2000) 79 Cal.App.4th 986, the Court of Appeal drew the first California line around what it means to take family leave “to care for” a parent. A physical therapist fired after flying to New York to help her independent, 81-year-old mother pack and relocate to a one-level apartment was held not to be “caring for” her mother under the Family Rights Act: her participation had to be “warranted” during “a period of the treatment or supervision” of her mother, and packing boxes and directing movers was not. Affirming judgment on the pleadings, the court confirmed that courts — not the agency — bear ultimate responsibility for construing CalFRA.

A steelworker fired months after testifying in a coworker’s asbestos case revived his public-policy and FEHA disability claims: they required no CBA interpretation, his union could not waive his judicial forum, and coworker evidence that the termination-night incident was staged made pretext a jury question.

Affirming summary judgment for the employer, the Court of Appeal held in the published portion of this opinion that a finite leave of absence can be a reasonable accommodation under FEHA, “provided it is likely that at the end of the leave, the employee would be able to perform his or her duties.” On undisputed facts the employer had accommodated its injured meatcutter twice — sixteen months of leave (nearly double the CBA's nine) and an offer of a vacant part-time position — so it need not also furnish the hand brace and other measures the employee preferred. The interactive-process discussion has since been overtaken by the Legislature's addition of an independent interactive-process duty (Gov. Code, § 12940, subd. (n)).

Section 132a does not provide an exclusive remedy; an employee may pursue FEHA disability-discrimination and common-law wrongful-termination claims notwithstanding the availability of a section 132a remedy.

Prilliman v. United Air Lines, Inc. An employer who knows of an employee’s disability has an affirmative duty to make known available, suitable job opportunities and to determine whether the employee is interested and qualified — not merely to wait for the employee to ask. Prilliman v. United Air Lines, Inc. (1997) 53 Cal.App.4th 935 […]

Raytheon refused to reinstate an employee diagnosed with AIDS even though its own medical staff and public-health officials uniformly found the disease was not transmissible through ordinary workplace contact. The Fair Employment and Housing Commission found unlawful handicap discrimination, and the Court of Appeal affirmed. AIDS is a physical handicap protected by California's antidiscrimination law, and an employer invoking the threat-to-health-and-safety-of-others defense bears the burden of proving it by a preponderance of the evidence.

When Lillian Garland returned from pregnancy disability leave to find her receptionist job filled, California’s guarantee of leave and reinstatement collided with her employer’s theory that Title VII forbade treating pregnancy “better” than other disabilities. The Supreme Court sided with California: the Pregnancy Discrimination Act is a floor beneath which pregnancy benefits may not drop, not a ceiling above which states may not rise — and employers can always comply with both laws by leveling benefits up. Guerra remains the constitutional foundation of the PDLL and of every California pregnancy protection built since.

A trucking company refused permanent employment to a driver whose preemployment physical revealed a congenital low-back condition, applying an absolute rule against hiring anyone with back deficiencies. The Fair Employment Practice Commission found unlawful handicap discrimination, and the Court of Appeal affirmed. An employer cannot exclude handicapped workers by class unless all or substantially all of the class cannot perform safely, the individualized safety defense cannot rest on conjecture of future harm, and there is no financial-impact exception.